WWE ’13 Preview: Live The Revolution (Part 3)

Just when you thought we had already told you everything with the first 2 pages of this article, we’ve had a lifted embargo granting us the ability to present you with more information! I’ll spit this out really quick: the classic blue steel cage has been implemented, and the inferno match grants the ability to drag a downed opponent into the fire as well as the standing opponent, and the 500 degree winning system has been completely changed/removed. The on-fire animations have seen some love as well.

Now that I got that out of my system, it’s time to jump even further into the Creation Suite!

Creation Suite:

Superstar Threads

The Superstar Threads feature has always been a great one, but has had a lot of room for improvement. Unfortunately, this is one area we don’t see very much change in. Players can still edit and save attires for any in-game superstar, but unfortunately cannot edit the entrance attires as has been highly requested for the past 2 installments now. We hope that this is one area that will see a LOT more attention next year.

Oh, and to answer the long-awaited question of how many slots: The answer is still 3.

Create A Superstar

For some players, nothing feels more amazing than creating their own superstar from scratch. For years, this series has dominated all other games with such an expansive creation suite, with create a superstar wearing the crown. This year however, it comes back better than it’s been in a long time. Let’s take a look.First off, you’ll be glad to know that along with the color wheel we already talked to you about for the skin tones, the transparency feature has returned. Along with transparency and the color wheel, we also have a new History panel, which we’ll see in this mode as well as in Create-an-Arena. The history panel remembers the previous 10 colors that we had chosen and allows us to select them instantly, so that setting things to a specific color time and time again won’t be necessary.

On top of this, some new parts have been put into the mode, and a good bit of them seem to have less of a glitchy nature than previous years. A few more details could still be announced, but this is all that we’re able to tell you right now.

Create An Arena

Create an Arena has so many great features this year. First of all, we’ve already mentioned the ability to edit the stage. This feature offers 20 different templates for doing so. You also get the option of arena size, which can be selected as Independent, Regular, Large, Tribute to the Troops (outdoor arena), and WrestleMania 19 (outdoor arena). The available 20 stage designs are last year’s custom arena stage, a second custom stage design, Royal Rumble 97, Royal Rumble 98, Survivor Series 97, Survivor Series 98, The Smackdown Oval Arena, One Night Only, Over the Edge 98, King of the Ring, Summerslam 98, Summerslam 2004, Judgement Day 98, Judgement Day 2004, Raw 2002, Rock Bottom 98,, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 99, WrestleMania 15, Raw 2006, and Smackdown 2006. Let’s dig a little deeper.

Stage Designer: Your stage, ring apron/mat, and additional ringside areas all get 15 layers each, giving you 45 layers of creative freedom. As for the Stage itself, you can apply logos (custom or pre-existing) to specific parts of the stage, change stage elements such as lighting fixtures, titantrons, and the scaffolds with preset options, and turn on or off titantrons and/or minitrons. You’ll spend hours making arenas you’ve always dreamed of. Each template has presets you’ll be able to work with and around.Along with this, you can edit the lighting in the arena, helping to make your show feel even more original.

Championship Editor

Championship Editor is a new feature this year. While it doesn’t grant players the ability to create entirely original titles of their own, it does allow for plenty of originality. A basic “superstar threads” for titles, this allows us to change the strap and plate colors of any in-game titles. Once you choose your colors, you can string together call names as well, which includes a great selection of options and grants the ability to make them feel more original. You’ll get to choose whether the belt is for Superstars or Divas, or if it’s Tag Team. Along with the ability to choose from any title in the game and to edit the colors to your liking, you’ll get to string up to 6 different words together to create a call name for your championship. It’s even possible to create the IMPACT Heavyweight Championship, or for example, the RING OF HONOR TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP. It’s an awesome feature, but is hidden away in the MY WWE menu and has not received much hype due to THQ not wanting fans to confuse it for a straight-up Create-A-Championship feature, which it is not.

So there you have it. Want a make the WWE Championship pink with purple plates and name it the National Mens Total Super Heavyweight Championship? Have at it.

STORY DESIGNERLegendary tales come from a combination of many things, including heroes, villains, drama, creativity and full-fledged cinematic moments. While Universe is an awesome feature in the games, some players just can’t find themselves at ease keeping their creativity and amazing moments or ideas to themselves – and for those players, we have the Story Designer. This mode has been in multiple installments of the game now, but last year went completely untouched as far as improvements go. That’s not the case this year, as Story Designer sees over 300 new scenes, several new opportunities to create branching storylines, and even includes the entrances (so no more clipping together other scenes to form a generic entrance). Story designer this year sees more of an opportunity for realism and customization than ever before.

On top of all of this, sharing your stories has been improved as well, because now, you’ll be able to find other users creations (such as arenas or superstars) and place them into your stories – and still be able to upload them to the servers! Seeing the lift of limitations like this will expand the ability for everyone to have a fair chance at creating a great, all-inclusive story.

Now, let’s talk Universe.

UNIVERSE 3.0 – FULL DETAILSFull customization of Universe was not some form of truth that we were stretching.
To better break it down, we’ll highlight all of the improvements piece by piece for you.
(Oh, a side note feature we’ve noticed has been added is that the game informs you of the roster sizes so you can be better prepared with what you place into your PPV event.)

Create/Edit the Schedule As You See Fit– Don’t want RAW or SMACKDOWN anymore? Delete them, and make your own main shows on whatever night you desire. Want to move Smackdown back to Thursdays, and have an XFL show on Friday (yes, the XFL logo is in the game, as is the Wrestlemania 29 logo), then you can. You can add in shows on ANY day of the week, Monday-Saturday, and set that show as a major or minor show. The difference here is that major shows will have titles assigned to them, while minor shows will not. When you add in your shows, you can then set whichever of your custom-assigned/arranged brands, whether it be Raw, Smackdown, Legends, or even a custom brand you created yourself (as well as any other brand or logo the game features that you may wish to choose from).- THIS INCLUDES THE NEW ABILITY TO ADD OR REMOVE PAY PER VIEW EVENTS. – We already covered this for the most part, but wanted to go a little more in-depth just to help answer your questions. When creating or editing a PPV event, you of course get to choose the arena, match-up-screen and logo for the event, but now you’ll have the ability to select a theme – which is basically a match style such as Hardcore or Endurance, which will focus on theme-specific main events. The themes include Hardcore, Endurance, Royal Rumble, Elimination Chamber, Wrestlemania, Extreme Rules, Over the Limit, Capitol Punishment, Money in the Bank, Summerslam, and more!

Restrict Storylines As You Wish – You can now adjust your storylines in Universe, such as turning on/off storylines in the following categories:
Tag Team Forming/Disbanding stories, Crowd-reaction changing stories (no more having someone turn heel out of nowhere if you don’t want them to be), Non-PPV stories, Injury stories, or ALL stories – so if you just wan’t to play through without anything actually happening, you can. On top of this, you can edit the card in it’s entirety and save it for later, setting everything from the attire for the match to how many finishers a superstar starts the match with (from 0-infinite).

Statistics – The game now keeps track of your win/loss record, as well as how you win or lose matches and the amount of weapons destroyed, among other great stats you’ll enjoy keeping track of.

Rankings –The game not only tracks statistics, but allows you to adjust and edit rankings to your liking. Tired of CM Punk being the #1 contender for both of your top titles on Raw? Well, this year, change it to your liking.

HP Ratio modification – you can now adjust the hit point ratios for superstars, making it easier or harder to wear down individual body parts such as head, arms, legs, or torso.

Start all over again, if you want – If you ever grow bored of your current Universe and feel the desire to rid it of it’s entirety and start with a brand new Universe, you have that ability now. The ability to reset Universe, a highly requested feature for the past 2 years, has now been implemented.

The Off-Scripts

While Attitude Era has plenty of gametime available through it’s main storylines, there were some moments in the Attitude Era that didn’t quite fit into those stories. And for those moments, we’ll experience “The Off-Script” section. Ever wish you could relive the debut of Chris Jericho? That’s just one of the great segments you’ll get to experience with the off-scripts.

GAMEPLAYThis is something we’ve had some questions about, and we wanted to inform everyone that while basic gameplay stays the same, the opponents now stay down a little longer and table physics have changed. Many other weapon physics however stay the same. Other than this, mid-air finishers have been implemented, and other features have seen slight improvements. Despite minor adjustments, the general feel of the gameplay has stayed the same, but with the creation suite seeing so many improvements, the biggest roster to ever hit the franchise, and the replay value that Universe and Story Designer both offer (not to mention little things we didn’t mention, like exhibition’s King of the Ring tournament), plus the new/improved matches we mentioned in our previous article, you can only begin to imagine the potential this game has.